For the second time in as many weeks, one of Miami’s neighboring municipalities is threatening to sue the city over plans to develop its valuable waterfront properties that lie along crucial county causeways.

The Key Biscayne Village Council voted late Tuesday to file a lawsuit against the city of Miami over a project in the works to rehabilitate the historic Miami Marine Stadium and redevelop the surrounding area. Village officials worry that a planned $16 million outdoor event space on the stadium grounds will be used to host dozens of Rickenbacker Causeway-clogging events, like the Miami International Boat Show, which is moving to the site in 2016.

The village will file a suit next week and then immediately stay the proceedings and enter into mediation, according to Village Attorney Stephen Helfman. Village officials say they’ve tried…

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Brought to Miami by the Swire Group, perhaps the most reknowned, rock-solid developers in the world. Their reputation is all about quality developments; fianacially sound project. Brickell City Centre is a 9-cre, multi-use development, which will encompass the former spaces of some of Miami’s landmark buildings.

Here I present the latest information from “Curbed Miami”. Amusing, on point and a good red. I will chime in later with my musings; mostly algebraic, because we have been analyzing this development since its development.

My recommendation? I have identified 3 units which re available now and are incredible; not only from a pricing perspective, but from a unit-line perspective.

We have the scoop. We work the development. Call me and I’ll give you the latest scoop.

Now, from our friends at, “Curbed Miami”;

Check Out Brickell City Centre’s 50% Sold Out First Tower

Although the residential aspect of the $1.05 billion Brickell City Centre megaproject doesn’t seem to have a website yet (nor is it included on this site) the sales center has opened the site Inhabit Miami is even reporting that the first tower is 50% sold out. BuzzBuzzHome provided renders and floor plans. This tower, called ‘Reach’, is the first of two residential towers in City Centre’s first phase. The second, further west, will be called ‘Rise’. Sales on that haven’t started. Nor have they on the 1 (or more?) residential towers in Phase II.

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Here is an early Summer update of skyscraper construction in Miami. Since the last construction update in March, numerous new towers have been proposed and approved across the city. Most of these newly proposed towers plan to break ground in late Summer and Fall 2013. In the meantime, below are some updates on the towers currently under construction.

1100 Millecento: The 42-story 1100 Millecento residential tower has gone vertical. The ground floor of this building looks like it’s going to be a great space. Especially overlooking Flatiron Park across the street, the location of this building is prime.

Brickell CityCentre: The Brickell CityCentre sites are a massive construction project, spanning four city blocks in the center of Brickell. Of all the projects under construction in the city, this is by…

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UPDATED, 5:30 p.m., June 18: Oceana Key Biscayne, the first U.S. development of Argentine real estate mogul and art collector Eduardo Costantini, is more than 90-percent sold-out pre-construction, leaving only 1 penthouse and 6 villas on the market 10 months after sales opened, The Real Deal has learned.

Oceana, the first new development in Key Biscyane in nearly 13 years, is scheduled to receive its final touches in July.

When completed in 2014, the Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Arquitectonica-designed all-glass, 14-story double tower on a 10.3-acre site will constitute a gated community with 142 units and 500 feet of private beach.

Costantini, chairman of the Nordelta gated community outside Buenos Aires and the founder of the Argentine capital’s Malba art museum, may exhibit works from his private collection in the Yabu-Pusehlberg-designed lobby. The community will also feature a social lounge, restaurant, pools, cabanas, a tennis court and a putting green.

The 5,187-square-foot, two-story villas with private pools on expansive private lots will be open for viewings starting August 15. Work is underway at Oceana Bal Harbour, Costantini’s development company, Consultatio, confirmed. –Emily Schmall

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By many accounts, the Great Recession is hardly over. With rising unemployment rates throughout Europe and continued stalled economic growth throughout the Western World, the global economy is still trying to recuperate from the excesses of the 2000s. The years between roughly 2002 to 2008 brought a massive building boom to Miami, particularly the Downtown and Brickell neighborhoods. Between these years, 48 skyscrapers (buildings taller than 400-feet or 120 meters) were built. These new towers completely altered the Miami skyline, giving it the title of “America’s third-largest skyline.” These skyscrapers also increased the Downtown area’s population by 30,000 people, growing from 39,176 people in 2000 to 71,000 in 2010.

This increase in population has brought renewed life to Miami’s inner city neighborhoods that had been abandoned since the 1960s for suburbs further away. Brickell, the neighborhood south of Downtown, is now one of the city’s most popular neighborhoods. Traditionally known…

Swire Properties CEO shares vision for planned Brickell CitiCentre

Martin Cubbon, CEO of Swire Properties, in Miami during the June groundbreaking for Brickell CitiCentre, stands by a rendering of the massive mixed-use project coming to 701 S. Miami Ave.

While U.S. companies see opportunity for investment in Asia, Swire Properties last year made its biggest financial commitment in Miami.

The decision to move forward on building Brickell CitiCentre, a $1.05 billion mixed-use project, is based on what Swire sees as the long-term potential for growth in this market.

“The best opportunity we’ve seen is here strangely, not in China,” said Martin Cubbon, chief executive of the Hong Kong-based Swire Properties. “This looked more attractive than the same analysis looked in big cities in China. But clearly there are plenty of others that don’t agree with me because they’ve been buying land in China, not in Miami.”

During 2008 and 2009, when others were pulling back on Miami as the financial and real estate meltdown hit, Swire Properties starting buying up land. Initially, the plan was to build condos. But as the size of the parcel grew so did the company’s ambitions.

“The chance to build something of real scale right downtown in the middle of a cosmopolitan American city is really rare,” Cubbon said. “Regardless of what’s happened in the market place, we couldn’t march into New York, LA or San Francisco and suddenly find nine acres of contiguous space right next to the main highway and the business district, within easy access of one of the best known tourist destinations. That’s very attractive.

“It may take us three or four years to piece all the elements together, but we will certainly do it. We’re not under any pressure from banks or investors.”

The Miami Herald sat down with Cubbon when he was in town in June for the Brickell CitiCentre groundbreaking. Here’s what he had to say:Q. What caught your interest in the Brickell area?

The Downtown Brickell area clearly began to change in 2009, 2010 and 2011. It became much more vibrant as more people began to stay and live in all the condos built in the last 10 years. It gave it a real buzz which I don’t think it had 10 or 15 years ago. It also created a need and the need was for high-quality shopping, entertainment and food and beverage. That had not really been built in a coherent, scalable way in the Downtown Brickell area in the past. That’s what we saw as the opportunity. We have the wherewithal to do it. Maybe we’re going to be proven wrong over the next five years. But we’re going to give it our best shot.Q. Did you look anywhere else in the U.S.?

No. We have a history here in Miami. We have been here a long time on Brickell Key. Our people understand the market. This couldn’t have happened anywhere else because we wouldn’t have had those eyes and ears on the ground looking at the opportunities. Sometimes I think it’s a little bit of serendipity how we got to where we are now. We wouldn’t have seen this opportunity had Steve Owens and his team not had a well-established office here. We wouldn’t have had the opportunity if land prices hadn’t corrected so sharply in 2008-2009. We wouldn’t have had this opportunity if we couldn’t have acquired enough space to do something that’s scalable. Scale is important when you’re talking about retail and entertainment.Q. Your company has built many similar mixed-use projects in Asia like Brickell CitiCentre. Why have you decided to shift from condo development to focus on this niche?

You can have some really good years building condos and you can have some lean years. We realized that was a highly volatile business all around the world. We wanted something that provided a more secure ongoing cash flow and rental stream. That’s when we started building industrial buildings, then office buildings and retail buildings. Then we began to combine them together. We have gone from being predominantly a residential developer to now owning or managing about 24 million square feet of commercial space.Q. In the U.S. many developers tend to have a short-term view, building projects and then flipping them. Why do you take the opposite approach?

Partially because we can. We’re a large company with a very strong balance sheet and we believe we add value because of this ongoing management and ownership. Having a long-term focus means we can approach management slightly differently. It’s what keeps tenants coming back to us and what keeps values of our properties up. In America we’re confident that we’ll be able to garner the right tenants who will want to be with us because they know that if Swire Properties designs and manages the project, we’re going to look after it long-term. That’s obviously good for their interests too. The simple example is Pacific Place, which has had a 25-year IRR of over 23 percent. It has been a fantastic investment. Q. What’s your vision for what impact these projects have on the redevelopment of the surrounding community?

It’s sort of like turning lead into gold. You’re basically pushing forward the boundary of something that is very valuable into something that is less valuable and that’s what generates the value. We would humbly submit that’s what we’re going to try to do with Brickell CitiCentre. We’re going to push the boundaries of what is currently the central business district a little bit further south and bring with it what we hope will be a transformation of values. This is not an overnight phenomenon. It will happen if we design well and we construct well, if we get the right tenants and if we manage them successfully. Q. How do you decide what goes in a mixed-use project like Brickell CitiCentre?

There is a real skill set in mixing the different uses: hotel, office, retail and condos. These things coming together, it’s not by a matter of accident. It’s really thinking about what the community and the area needs most, and ultimately what it will pay for. It’s not an overnight phenomenon. We’ve been thinking about the mix for Brickell CitiCentre over the course of the last 18 months. What’s going to maximize the value of that site? What is that community known for and what does it need? You can do a number of things when you’ve got nine acres, but not everything is going to work. You have to be responsive to the area. What do you think people need? Do they necessarily need another supermarket? Another department store? . . . Brickell CitiCentre is going to have a strong entertainment and food and beverage bias. We think it’s going to be a bit trendy and chic, to attract the young people that broadly live in this community.

The project will have its own peculiar look and style that befits Miami. This is not Beijing or Hong Kong. One can’t glibly import something that works in Hong Kong and think it will work in Miami. That’s why if you look at all six of our centers, not one repeats the name. We don’t think this is about replicating a series of boxes and plopping them all over world. It’s about responding to the community and the locale. Q. Is this a sign of future U.S. expansion to come or is Asia still the company’s focus?

China and Hong Kong is still our home and the biggest portion of our asset base. My single biggest challenge right now is finding projects that I think make sense in the long-term. In Asia where we’ve dominated, there’s been a rapid escalation in value. Yes, there are still projects, but given the land costs and construction costs you have to look at whether these projects really make sense.Q. Would you consider doing more projects in Miami or South Florida?

We would consider doing more in Miami or South Florida. This project will give us critical mass that we’ve not had in Miami in forever. Once you put in place something of this size, people suddenly know Swire Properties. I think if we have success in Brickell CitiCentre, people will believe that we can do it again.Q. Why does an Asian company have a small outpost in Miami? How did it happen?

It’s another great serendipity story. The company grew very quickly in the ‘70s and ‘80s and we generated a lot of capital. The company was looking to diversify. Swire Group is a big Coca-Cola bottler and that gave us a relationship with Coca-Cola in Atlanta. It was a reference from Coca-Cola that made us come to Miami and also Hawaii. We looked at both markets and we invested in both markets. Hawaii operated for a number of years and we sold out. Here we kept on reinvesting.Q. Swire Properties recently went public in a nontraditional arrangement. Why did you decide to go this route?

We made the decision to go public in 2009 and tried to list in 2010. But we got to the point of the road show and it coincided with the first Greek crisis. We still could have done the deal but we would have had to sell the shares at more than a 25 percent discount to net asset value. The exising shareholders weren’t prepared to do that.

We moved on and chose to sell one of our assets, Festival Walk. We sold it in in August of last year. That raised $2.4 billion in U.S. dollars. That gave us the capital so we didn’t really need to go to the stock market at that time. Instead, we did something quite innovative, called a listing by way of introduction. We get a listing by way of distributing shares in the company to the existing shareholders in Swire Group. That means you weren’t looking to raise any money, but we get a listing. We don’t suffer the pain of selling our assets on the cheap. But we have a vehicle for the longer term. Should we need capital, we can now go to the markets and raise it.

This South Beach condo recently sold for $25 million. In just the first six months of the year, 400 condos priced at $1 million or more sold.

Is Miami-Dade County already experiencing another condo boom — this time strictly in the luxury market?

During the first half of the year, some 400 condos worth at least $1 million each sold in just the resale market alone, according to CondoVultures.com.

That’s up 7.8% from the same time last year. Even more remarkably, the median per-square-foot price hit $699. Prices in the luxury market haven’t been near that number since 2007.

Eye-catching individual deals have accented the luxury boom, including the recent $25-million sale of a condo on South Beach and three sales of more than $10 million at the St. Regis Bal Harbour Residences.

Many buyers are foreign — from Latin America, Russia and Europe. For most, the units are investment properties or second homes.

“If I’m an investor, I can buy a new unit that was built during the boom … for a cheaper price than new construction,” says Peter Zalewski, principal of CondoVultures.com. He notes that there are 10 condo towers already under construction east of I-95 from Miami to northern Palm Beach County. Developers have proposed another 35, including one in South Beach with prices at about $1,500 per square foot.

Cash is king, too. Although Zalewski doesn’t have updated statistics, he says that a year ago, a CondoVultures study found some 80% of the condo transactions in the county were all cash. Plus, he notes, “there’s typically about a 15% to 20% premium that someone is likely to pay if their offer is based on financing.”

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As the South Florida real estate market was crashing in 2008, the developers of the proposed St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort were launching construction of the three-tower condominium and hotel project with more than 500 units on a site that fronts the Atlantic Ocean.

Fast forward three years to the present. The complex’s developer is ramping up the sales campaign to identify buyers in anticipation of completing the project in the fourth quarter of 2011. The official grand opening is scheduled for January 2012.

Besides the Collins Avenue location on a nearly nine-acre, oceanfront site across from the Bal Harbour Shops, a cornerstone of the sales effort is the slightly reduced prices that start at $760 per square foot compared to more than $1,000 per square foot at the onset of construction, according marketing materials.

“Many people were skeptical when the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort construction began at the start of the real estate shakeout in early 2008,” said Carolyn Ross, a real estate sales associate with the licensed Florida brokerageCVR Realty™. “To the development group’s credit, they pushed ahead with the construction despite the condo world experiencing dramatic change all around them. As we look ahead to the project’s formal opening in 2012, many of the early skeptics are surely reconsidering their outlook.”

Bal Harbour is a ultra-wealthy village of 3,300 people located on a barrier island between Miami Beach and Sunny Isles Beach.

Bal Harbour is a destination for a lot of boat owners as the village is located on the south bank of the only inlet on the barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway between Miami Beach’s trendy neighborhood of South Beach and Fort Lauderdale.

The St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort is comprised of three 27-story towers with more than 500 condos, condo-hotels, fractional condos, and hotel rooms.

The North and South towers are slated to be traditional condominiums while the Center Tower is to be comprised of a St. Regis hotel that includes condo-hotel units, fractional residences, and traditional condominiums.

The St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort is to include four swimming pools, a 12,000-square-foot Remede spa, and signature restaurants.

In Bal Harbour proper, there are 194 condominium units on the resale market at an average price of $622 per square foot as of March 25, according to an analysis by CVR Realty™.

An additional 41 units – with an average asking price of $398 per square foot – are currently under contract waiting to transact, according to the analysis based on Florida Realtors association data.

Within the last six months, buyers have acquired 71 units at an average price of $383 per square foot in Bal Harbour, according to the analysis.